Answer the following: You heard Beck's last album, Guero, (a) online as an unfinished mix that was leaked in late 2004; (b) as the official 2005 Interscope CD release, which contained most of the tracks on the leaked version plus a few new songs; (c) as the deluxe CD/DVD edition, complete with seven bonus tracks, a surround sound mix, and interactive video art to accompany every song; (d) in one of the many unauthorized fan mashups floating around the Net; (e) not as Guero at all, but as Guerolito, a commercially released companion piece featuring remixes by Diplo, Adrock, and Boards of Canada.

Whatever your answer – and, yes, you can choose more than one – Guero represented a new way to think about the album. Because there was no album, no static list of 13 songs. Instead, there was a project that drew on Beck's Latin leanings and the Dust Brothers' eclectic production to create a portrait of the artist circa 2003-2005 (a Guero Cycle, if you will). Such is the future of the album, as envisioned by Beck; it's something to be heard, seen, and reconstituted by artist and audience alike. As the Beatles did with Sgt. Pepper's almost four decades ago, Beck has expanded the range and potential of the form.

The repercussions here aren't just creative. The very logistics and economics of the music industry are at stake, as one album becomes a long shelf of
songs and products, each carrying its own release date, distribution path, and price tag. In the end, fans can create their own versions of the album, stringing fave songs and remixes into one ideal playlist.

Now Beck is doing it again. The multiple versions, the audience interactions, the multimedia experiments – they're all back in Guero's yet-to-be-titled follow-up, due out this fall. Wired caught up with the iconic singer-songwriter in Los Angeles to discuss mashups, YouTube, and the future of the album.

Guero, with all its various versions and releases, seems to have heralded the end of the album as we know it.
There are so many dimensions to what a record can be these days. Artists can and should approach making an album as an opportunity to do a series of releases – one that's visual, one that has alternate versions, and one that's something the listener can participate in or arrange and change. It's time for the album to embrace the technology.

Isn't all that repackaging just about making ways to sell more product?
I guess that's part of it, but for me it's more about giving the music legs, giving people new ways to experience it. There are so many ways to integrate technology into music; I can't wait to see how the opportunities end up being put to use.

What sort of things do you envision?
Even though the mashup sensibility has become something of a cliché, I'd love to put out an album that you could edit and mix and layer directly in iTunes. We did a remix project on a Web site a few years back where we put up the tracks to a song and let people make their own versions. There was something really inspiring about the variety and quality of the music that people gave back. In an ideal world, I'd find a way to let people truly interact with the records
I put out – not just remix the songs, but maybe play them like a videogame.

Any other ideas?
Well, cover art and all the paraphernalia that come with albums have always been really important to me. I'm one of those people who needs a visual crutch for music. But that stuff is being devalued, since so many people listen on their computers. I've been toying with the idea of replacing album art with moving graphics that would pop up on your computer when you played songs from the album.

Do you ever get nostalgic for the albums of old, the LP and all that?
Sure. I'm something of a traditionalist, so I have a soft spot for a record with just a standard side A and side B. But there's simply more room for information with digital media, and it would be ridiculous not to take advantage of that. It's sort of like the difference between a wire recording and a piano roll and a cassette tape. They're different formats, and they inspire different approaches.

So what are you doing with these ideas on the new album?
I haven't figured it all out yet, but one cool thing is that the CD cover is going to be designed so no two copies are the same. The artwork is going to be customizable. The album will come with all these little stickers – each copy
of the disc will have a different set – and you'll use them to create your own version of the cover. The idea is to provide something that calls for interactivity and that's totally different from what you'll have if you just download the album.

Anything else in the works?
Well, we're going to put out a version of the record that people will be able to watch on sites like YouTube.

Whoa. What's that all about?
We filmed a series of very low-budget, homemade videos for all the songs on the record. We got a bunch of cameras and a $100 video mixer off eBay and shot 15 silly, impromptu videos against a greenscreen. We even invited our friends and family into the studio to be a part of the action – my mother-in-law did the lighting, and my son and nieces and nephews are running around acting crazy. It was just a complete free-for-all, done on the fly. We're putting all the videos together right now with the idea of having a visual version of the record that we'll put on the Internet. I'm totally curious to see how the videos will add to the experience of listening to the album. Or maybe they'll actually detract from the experience. That would be funny.

So you don't mind people sharing videos on the Web?
Not at all. The whole idea behind making videos is to get them out there for people to see. They don't really play videos on TV anymore, so I have no problem with people putting them online.

Do you personally come up with these projects?
Yeah, most of them. I have a pretty strong art background, and getting to create all these extensions of the music is how I bring my appreciation for that world into what I do.

Does your label, Interscope, ever balk at your ideas?
Actually they've been great about everything. The labels are trying to figure all this stuff out just like everyone else, and I feel fortunate that I've been able to do so much experimenting to see what works. I've also been lucky because I signed a unique record deal back when I started that allowed me to try out a lot of weird things and even record different types of albums for different labels. I think that set me up nicely for where things are currently headed.

So do you think the music industry is moving toward a model where artists will license individual projects to labels instead of signing long-term contracts?
I'd be surprised if artists didn't do a lot more of that type of stuff in the next few years. I'm excited about being able to take totally different approaches to creating and distributing different types of projects. I like the idea that I can quickly record a few acoustic songs that I've been working on and immediately put them online for people to download. And then I can record songs with a producer in a big studio for a big label and put them out as a CD, a DVD, and a remix project and let people experience that music in very different ways.

Couldn't you do all that stuff on your own? Do you really even need a label anymore?
It's hard to say what will happen with all that. Record labels definitely aren't going to go away, but it'll be really interesting to see how
their role changes. Some of the guys in my band recently started a side band just for fun. At their first show, kind of as a joke, they told everyone to check out their MySpace page – which they hadn't even set up yet. As soon as they got offstage they signed up for an account and put some live recordings online. A couple of days later, they checked back, and a bunch of people had visited and heard their music. Obviously, this was all without a label – without even an album out. It kind of blew my mind.

Are you surprised by how quickly things are changing?
A little. It used to take 5 to 10 years for something new to get through and really make an impact, but that's changing. I had been playing music for a long time when "Loser" became a hit on the radio. It seemed to most people like my success came overnight, but it took years of building and playing tiny shows. We didn't play the 1,000-seat venues for years. Now I see groups come out who have a few cool MP3s online, and they're selling out theaters across the country.